Bosnian war 'orphan' snatched as a baby finds father after 16 years

When Mohammed Becirovic returned to his village he found his home a charred ruin, his wife and two daughters gone - abducted by Serbian militiamen.

By Bojan Pancevski in Vienna

7:20PM GMT 10 Jan 2009

As war and ethnic cleansing spread across Bosnia, he gave up any hope of seeing them again - believing them to be among the thousands buried in nameless graves.

But 16 years later DNA testing of war orphans revealed that his infant daughter Senida had miraculously survived the conflict and was living with elderly foster parents in the Serbian capital Belgrade.

The first meeting, arranged by the Red Cross, changed their lives. "We cried endlessly," said Mr Becirovic. "I cannot even attempt to describe what happened there on that day."

Plucked by a Serbian soldier from the ruins of their village, Caparde, on the very first day of the war in April 1992, Senida had been given up for adoption.

Although she always knew she was a war baby, she never knew her real identity: instead she was Mila Jankovic, growing up in a wealthy district of Belgrade.

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"All this seems to me like some dream where different people I know nothing about suddenly turn up," she said. "There are no words to describe this feeling. I am so happy and I am not happy at the same time, I am glad and I am not glad."

Her mother Senada, born in 1967, and her older sister Sanda, born in 1988, have never been located.

Now the Red Cross hopes that by publicising Senida's story new information might come to light.

Overwhelmed by discovering an entire new family - her father remarried in Germany and still has relatives in Caparde - Senida does not know what to do.

She is unwilling to accept her father's invitation to live with his new wife and daughter in Stuttgart, where he works in a Mercedes factory.

"They are my flesh and blood and I am happy to have found my family," she told The Sunday Telegraph. "But it is too much at the moment. My father is still a stranger to me and cannot replace my foster parents."

Mr Becirovic is desperate to give his daughter the affection and security he was unable to provide throughout her childhood and is determined to discover what became of his wife and other daughter.

"I will not rest until I know what happened on that fateful day when I lost my family," he said. "I want to know if they are dead and I want to give them a proper burial."

He had never intended to leave his loved ones alone in a time of war. Although Bosnia had just declared independence, everybody expected a period of diplomacy.

As usual, he had driven 12 miles to the town of Tuzla, where he taught in a high school. Hours later Serbian forces unleashed their war machine in a surprise attack with tanks and artillery.

"I was at work when the shooting started," he said. "We heard loud detonations, tanks were rolling in and they announced on TV that Muslims were fleeing to the hills and forests."

Caparde, an ugly collection of red-tiled houses around an old mosque, was one of the first villages to be overwhelmed.

Close to the Serbian border and the Sarajevo-Belgrade highway, its mix of ethnic groups posed a threat to politicians who wanted a Serbian republic in that part of Bosnia.

Paramilitary fighters poured across the green hills, still bright with spring flowers, in a ferocious onslaught of ethnic cleansing.

Muslim men and women were thrown into concentration camps, where many were executed or raped. Muslim houses were demolished.

Devastated by the loss of his family, Mr Becirovic fled to an area controlled by the Bosnian army, where he remained until he was wounded by bombing in 1995.

Yet unbeknownst to her father, Senida had been rescued by a Serbian soldier, who took pity on the helpless baby found alone in her cradle amid the wreckage.

He took her to his mother who promised to look after the nine-month-old girl, but changed her mind after neighbours turned on her for sheltering a Muslim.

Eventually Senida was adopted by an elderly couple - Zhivan and Zhivka Jankovic - who had lost their own child in a traffic accident years earlier.

She lived with the couple until they became too frail to look after her and has now moved to a boarding school for orphans.

She still thinks of them as her real family and refers to them as "Grandad and Grandma".

After being reunited with her father, Senida went to Caparde where she met her mother's sister, Mejra Hasic, who still lives in the area.

"It is incredible how much she looks like her mother," Mrs Hasic said.

Together, they went to visit the war memorial, where her own name is inscribed alongside those of her mother and sister.

She is now petitioning the Bosnian government to have them erased from the black granite obelisk.

Senida is also changing her documents to get a Bosnian passport in her old name - but plans to retain the identity she grew up with.

"No one tries to understand what is going on in my head," she said. "Right now I just want to go on with my old life. Everyone will still call me Mila."